


Only The Lonely

by versayce



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: A shocking lack of tentacle sex, Dubious Consent, Other, and there's an awful lot of Dan for some reason, people are snacks, the word 'quiche' appears far too often
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-22
Updated: 2018-11-22
Packaged: 2019-08-27 12:46:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16702861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/versayce/pseuds/versayce
Summary: The heartwarming tale of one earth dumbass and one space dumbass who, together, figure out a totally dysfunctional relationship that somehow works perfectly for them both.





	Only The Lonely

**Author's Note:**

> I have long been Unwell, but I watched the movie and then felt so strongly that this fic had to happen that I wrote it on my sickbed. Please enjoy responsibly, and sorry it takes like 6,000 words to get to the sex. I think Addressing Emotional Issues is the best kind of foreplay.

“You know, I used to have an imaginary friend when I was a kid,” Eddie says once, crouched in some prickly bushes near the house of a man who made a lot of money letting poison of the industrial kind run into rivers that had lots of small towns no one cared about dotting the banks. Allegedly.

The feeling of a question tugs at the back of Eddie’s mind – Venom isn’t familiar with the concept of an imaginary friend, so Eddie explains.

Venom considers this new information, then asks, _Did you not have human friends to talk to as a child?_

“Not really,” Eddie says distractedly, wiping tuna salad from the corner of his mouth before taking another bite of his stakeout sandwich. “I was a weird kid. Talked too much, tried too hard to get everyone to like me, kept sticking my nose into everyone’s business even though they didn’t want me around.”

A sharp black spike shoots out of Eddie’s elbow into some nearby foliage, then retracts with a wriggling, wounded rat skewered on the end of it. A trick Venom learned from Riot. Eddie looks away when the crunching starts.

 _You talked to it?_ Venom asks as the spike soaks back under Eddie’s sleeve. _This imaginary friend?_

“Yeah, I guess.”

_Did it talk back?_

Eddie frowns. “That’s not how imaginary friends work. It'd be a mental illness if he talked back. I just kind of— I don’t know. I made him up. Gave him a name. Fred. And when I ran around in the park looking for buried treasure or whatever, sometimes I’d think about Fred, like he’s there too but just hanging back so I can’t see him.”

 _So you were lonely because no one liked you,_ Venom points out, helpfully.

Eddie makes an affronted noise that sounds a little bit like he might be choking on his sandwich, actually, but then he clears his throat and says, “Don’t get all touchy-feely about my crappy childhood. That’s not the point. I was just thinking this feels a little bit like that, us working together. Like you’re my imaginary friend. Only you kill people and eat rats and shit.”

Venom is silent for a moment, then asks, _Are you still lonely?_

The question catches Eddie off guard, so instead of telling the truth he says, “What, with you around? Nah, never.” Then, “Oh shit, here he comes,” putting his sandwich away and getting his camera out. “Who’s ready for a little investigative B&E?”

Venom has already previously learned that B&E doesn’t stand for anything remotely fun like, say, ‘Brutalizing and Eviscerating’, so it’s not as enthused as Eddie to be prowling around in this scumbag’s house after he leaves. Walking softly, not touching anything, and taking pictures of pieces of paper isn’t its idea of a good time, but this is important to Eddie so it— Participates. Not without complaint, mind you, but still.

_Eddie. This is boring._

“Yeah, yeah, I don’t want to hear it,” Eddie says, without even a word of thanks for the clever way Venom slipped in under the back door to open it from the inside. Fine, so it had to be dissuaded first from simply crashing in through the window. It won’t deny that it doesn’t have a predilection for stealth.

Inside the house it’s dark and quiet. A pair of animal eyes flash green from under the kitchen table. The scumbag has a cat.

_Can I—_

“No!” Eddie whispers back furiously. The cat hisses at them, ears flattened back, body low to the ground, and hightails it to safety.

 _The rat was tasty, but small,_ Venom laments.

“That’s real tragic, buddy,” Eddie answers without a shred of feeling. “Now shut up for a second. He’s not gonna be gone long and I need to find the receipts for the company that supplied him the pipes. Should prove that―”

Venom ripples in disapproval just underneath Eddie’s skin, making him shudder and curse.

_Find your papers and let’s go rip some limbs off criminals._

“It’ll go quicker if you keep quiet,” Eddie points out.

 _Fine,_ Venom rumble-hisses. _I’ll be quiet. Like your pathetic imaginary friend._

Eddie flinches, makes a face that Venom doesn’t like, then says, “Thank you very much. You’re a real saint.”

 _Just don’t start calling me Fred,_ Venom tells him, and then Eddie can feel something like a sharp-toothed grin spreading wide inside his chest, which is a strange thing to feel.

 

::>:+:<::

 _This music sucks,_ Venom complains.

Eddie keeps typing, shovels the last bit of croissant into his mouth, and mumbles around it – “You don’t like electro swing? The unholiest of Earth’s many hybrid genres? Shocking.”

Eddie’s vision flickers black as if in warning, and Venom hisses, _Change it._

“Can’t do that. In case you haven’t noticed we’re not at home. We’re in a four-dollar-croissant kind of coffee shop, and these places usually keep a pretty strictly enforced playlist.”

 _Eddie._ There’s a sharp edge to Venom’s sibilant insistence. _Change it._

“I said I can’t,” Eddie tells him under his breath. “Now stop bothering m―” Here his own voice cuts out, and a booming, unholy growl spills out of his mouth: **_“ALEXA, PLAY CHOPIN!”_**

The barista shoots them a pointed glare, but none of the patrons so much as look up from their laptops or copies of New York Times bestselling autobiographies. This is San Francisco after all, stranger things have happened, and it’s not like Eddie just full-body dunked himself into a live lobster tank or anything.

He twists in his seat, away from anyone who might see him have a scathing argument with himself, and pretends to rummage through his duffle.

“Venom, buddy, pal – you can’t do this. We talked about it. I very, Very Distinctly remember having a conversation about keeping a low profile in public.”

_This music makes my cells feel all… Disjointed._

“Does it now? Well, you can either live with it or we can leave. Up to you. But you can’t be hijacking my face to yell about Alexa. Where did you pick that up, anyway?”

_On the internet._

“When do you―”

_While you sleep._

“Sure. Of course. While I sleep,” Eddie mutters – now strictly to himself. Not that it makes any difference at this point. He’s already on the barista’s shit list. There will be no more coffee and croissants today, only suspicion and dirty looks. It’s fine by him. It’s late, and they sat at their table, working, for most of the day, typing up notes from interviews with migrant workers being fleeced for their labour. They’re tired. Both of them.

_Let’s go home, Eddie. Pick up someone to snack on along the way._

They get a box of chocolate croissants from a convenience store instead.

“Five minutes in the toaster oven and they’re as good as fresh,” Eddie promises, but Venom doesn’t want to wait, gobbles up the remaining croissants, plastic and all. It was sheer bravado on Eddie’s part anyway. Reheated croissants are never as good as fresh.

 _Eddie, play Chopin,_ Venom tries again as soon as they’re done eating, as if Eddie is its own personal off-brand Alexa.

Eddie ignores its demands, tries to lick the leftover chocolate from his fingers instead, but Venom beats him to it, materializing that unnerving mockery of a face it likes to make and gleefully laving Eddie’s fingers before he can even protest.

“Gross,” Eddie complains, wiping his slimy fingers on his jeans, which is pretty gross too, especially since the paper towels are riiiiiight there.

Venom slithers back into the home it made for itself inside Eddie’s body like some grotesque hermit crab that defies every law of nature, then repeats, _Chopin!_

“Is this why you’re a loser back wherever it is you come from?” Eddie asks, getting a flash of some place that’s all cold-dark-quiet-hunger-boredom. “Because your taste in music is the same as an eighty year old French widow with an impressive doily collection?”

_The piano has a pleasing sonic profile._

“Sure it does. Only I don’t have any Chopin on―”

Before he can finish speaking, Eddie’s hand spasms, then moves on its own to grab his phone out of his pocket, unlock the screen, and pull up YouTube. ‘Chopin’, his fingers type of their own volition – or rather, of Venom’s volition – and after a bit of scrolling past quite a few videos marked ‘watched’, he presses play on one of them and the kitchen fills with sound.

It’s— Not bad. In the back of Eddie’s mind Venom sort of froths contentedly and then settles down.

“Hm,” Eddie says, closing his eyes for just a second to take it in. “Sounds kinda familiar.”

_I play it while you sleep. Helps keep me nice and cohesive._

Eddie’s eyes fly open. “Son of a fuck. So that’s where all my data overages are coming from!”

Venom is not the least bit remorseful. Its dark weight seeps into Eddie’s limbs and walks them over to the couch, flops them down, and rests the phone on their belly.

 _Shut up and listen,_ it rumbles inside Eddie’s head. _Here comes the best part._

Eddie had never before considered that classical piano pieces might have anything like a ‘best part’, and feels a little affronted that it was the alien goo circulating not unpleasantly through all his vital parts who made him aware of that fact. But Venom is not wrong. There it goes, the aforementioned best part. It flows through him – easy, like cool water – both familiar and new at the same time, like an old favourite he hasn’t heard in a while.

“Maybe,” Eddie says, yawning, “you have the right idea here. Next time try playing me that owl that teaches languages when I’m sleeping. Always wanted to be fluent in Spanish.”

_Vete a dormir, perdedor._

“Whassat?” Eddie asks, but he’s too far gone on the sleep-inducing Chopin to make out Venom’s uncharacteristically subdued answer:

_Something I picked up from Maria._

 

::>:+:<::

“Nope,” Eddie says resolutely, staring down a rooftop ventilation shaft. It’s a ten storey drop, maybe more. Hard to tell. It’s dark in there. “Nope, nope, nope, nope, aaaaand – nope.”

_Marvelous! Let’s go in through the front instead! Slurp the eyeballs right out the faces of some security guards!_

“Isn’t there a back way? Service entrance or something?”

_Oh yes. Even more delicious guards that way. An exceptional idea!_

Eddie looks back down into the ventilation shaft, tries not to let the resignation show on his face. It’s cold on the roof, and it’s been drizzling all night, which only makes it worse. He zips up his jacket a little more, as if that will do any good, and rubs his hands together, shifting from foot to foot.

Do they really need to go in there? Does a shady anonymous tip about some suspicious samples from Life Foundation headquarters being delivered to this out of the way, heavily fortified lab really merit a plunge into god knows what?

Eddie sighs. Yes – of course it’s worth it. Obviously he’s going to do it. He just wishes there was the option of a secluded staircase as an entry point. A rusty old ladder no one remembers. Anything but this.

 _Cold,_ Venom growls. _Move, or I’ll move us._

“God, you’re the worst, you know that?” Eddie complains, then looks back down into the murky abyss. “Guess we’re going that way.”

_Oh well. There are sure to be some guards inside the building too._

There are, in fact, some guards inside the building. Eddie does a pretty good job of evading them at first, but he trips up an alarm while opening a door clearly labeled ‘SECURE AREA – NO UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY’, and that brings a bunch of armed goons down on them.

Eddie doesn’t even have time to try to reason with them. Itchy trigger fingers, every single one. It’s what he’s started calling ‘the 2 a.m. special’ in the privacy of his own jumbled up thoughts: late night, a building he shouldn’t be in, Venom’s endearing anthropophagy wisecracks, hired thugs with more firepower than good sense, black goo, broken bones, massive blood loss on all sides, and sometimes, when everything is extra special, there’s a car/motorcycle chase.

It’s an extra special kind of night.

And all because of what? An anonymous tip? He should know they’re usually worthless. He’s not going to go off adventuring ever again based on a—

Fuck. What a lie. Yes, yes he is. He definitely is. Because he’s a dumbass and an idiot and what little sense of self-preservation he used to have is being slowly eroded by that low inky growl in his head, constantly goading him on.

He’s exhausted, he’s drenched with rain and sweat and blood in equal measures (a horrible ratio, terrible), and all he has to show for it is a case full of slides marked ‘Subject 2241-C’. In the morning he’ll swing by Doctor Dan’s and beg him, with that crooked ‘I am but a pitiable fool’ smile that works every time, to run some tests. Won’t amount to anything, probably. Venom’s already sniffed the case like some phlegmy hellhound and pronounced that it contained no trace of symbiote material. So much for proof of extraterrestrial misdeeds at the Life Foundation, but at least Eddie can convince himself for a little while longer that none of Venom’s extended family remain on earth.

By the time they make it home, Eddie is swaying on his feet.

And Venom? Venom is surreptitiously sucking the last bit of marrow out of a vertebrae it squirreled away god knows where. When the delicious marrow is all gone, Venom crunches up the boney bits too and all but purrs as it settles back under Eddie’s skin.

“At least someone had a good time tonight,” Eddie says, a little snippy.

 _The best,_ Venom agrees, and that gets Eddie’s hackles up.

“You know what? I’m starting to think that maybe one of us is getting more out of this partnership than the other one. The first one being you and uh, the other one, obviously, me.”

_Uh-huh._

“No, really. Like maybe one of us is taking advantage of the situation. Hanging out in this nice comfy body, snacking on spines, always picking the music, while the other one has to put up with skulking around rooftops three night a week – minimum – and then the cleanup afterwards. Look at us. We’re a fucking mess.” Eddie sticks his thumb through a hole in his sweatshirt where a stray bullet got him right in the gut. “This shit hurts.”

_I fixed it._

“Yeah, sure you did. But it still hurts. That, and I really liked this shirt. The sleeves weren’t too short, the hood wasn’t too big, the pockets were at just the right height. Annie could have probably fixed it up. Annie could sew. But you? You’re just going to lounge around in _my_ body doing a whole lot of nothing while I―”

 _Our body,_ Venom corrects him.

“Nope,” Eddie says. “No way.”

 _Our body,_ Venom repeats, and sends itself in ripples all through Eddie. _You are mine._

Eddie stops to consider that for a moment, then says, “Am I?”

Venom is confused. Or at least, Eddie thinks it’s confused, because it doesn’t offer an immediate smart-mouthed comeback. Eddie takes advantage of this lull to just keep on talking, the last rusty gear still turning in his brain to painfully grind out words.

“By uh, by what fucked-up intergalactic law am I yours? By whose— By whose fucking decree?”

 _Eddie,_ Venom says, but Eddie ignores him.

“I never signed anything. Don’t recall saying ‘I do’. But here you are in _my_ fucking apartment, in _my_ fucking body, getting me shot and freaking me out and driving me crazy like the goddamn parasite you really, actually are, and I’m sick of it, I’m―”

_Eddie!_

“Oh god. Fuck. Holy fucking fuck,” Eddie whines, his chest collapsing in on itself like a dying star. “There’s a— A fucking alien— Thing— An actual fucking alien in my body. And it eats people. It likes Chopin. Oh my god,” he wheezes, like this is the first time he’s actually stopped to think about it. Really think about it. This dark, hungry, vicious thing from outer space _inside him._ This possessive, protective, sassy— Entity. God, he doesn’t even know what it is. Has no idea what it’s doing to him, where it came from, what it wants from him. What it _really_ wants.

He looks at his hands. They’re shaking. “What’s happening to me?”

Venom growls and Eddie’s whole body seizes up. He can’t move, can’t blink, can’t breathe— He’s gonna fucking die. He’s gonna drop dead right here, his heart stopping, his bones crushed, the simultaneous bursting of every blood vessel in his body. He’s—

_You are fine. Calm the hell down._

Oddly, he does. As if on command. A second ago his head was ringing from all the crazy shit it couldn’t wrap itself around, and now it’s a placid lake in there or something. Listen close and you might hear a loon calling, trees rustling, the gentle sound of a boat gliding over still water. It feels like one of those meditation CDs, if the meditation CDs ever actually worked.

“What did you do?” Eddie asks, suddenly standing on solid ground again.

_Absorbed some nasty neurotransmitters. Your messed up brain made too many of them. Tastes like shit._

Eddie knows he should be distressed by this. He tries to be upset, he really does, but nothing happens. Huh. It actually feels pretty nice, albeit in a violating kind of way.

“Ok,” he says. “So that might have been a little panic attack. But it doesn’t mean I didn’t make some good points back there.”

_You want to whine about our body some more?_

“I do, I really do, but not right now,” Eddie says. “Maybe tomorrow. Right now I’m just going to lie down on the floor and pass out, ok?”

_Bed._

“No, floor. I’m filthy.”

 _I can fix that,_ Venom says, and before Eddie can even begin to wonder what that means, a cool, prickly feeling blooms out from the centre of his back and spreads all sticky-slick across his skin. Not over his clothes, like it usually does – and where are his clothes anyway? Oh, there they go, tossed into various corners of the room by nimble tendrils. He’s sort of hovering, lifted slightly off the ground for this quick, efficient undressing, black fluid coating his entire body in the meantime. It’s everywhere. _Everywhere._ No nook or cranny safe. And while Eddie’s stressed-out chemicals might have been depleted, all gobbled up, his feel-good, funtime chemicals sure aren’t.

Man, does it ever feel good, whatever it is. Like being lightly touched, licked clean, everywhere all at once.

Eddie can’t help the little moan that slips past his shoddy self-control, but just as quickly as it started, it’s over, the dark tide of overwhelming sensation receding into the space between his shoulder blades.

 _There,_ Venom says, _all clean,_ and then unceremoniously dumps Eddie onto the bed.

And yeah, it’s pretty much the most thoroughly clean Eddie has ever felt, but also the most incredibly dirty at the very same time.

He paws at his blanket until he manages to pull it over himself, drags a pillow under his head and says, “And that, too. We’re gonna have to talk about that too. Tomorrow.”

 

::>:+:<::

No talking of any kind takes place the next morning.

How do you start a conversation about brain chemicals being a no-no place with the alien slime that shares your body? Eddie has no clue, so he pretends nothing happened, on the incredibly unlikely off-chance that it will never happen again. Instead of starting a conversation, Eddie makes breakfast, grabs the case they made off with the night before, and goes to see Doctor Dan, who makes it as far as “Oh, hey Eddie, how’s it―” before he stops and puts down the files he’s been holding.

Eddie can tell that Dan really tries to look at him in that attentive-yet-detached way a trained physician should look at his patients. To Dan’s credit, he very narrowly misses the mark, only a slight drawing-together of his eyebrows giving away his concern.

Frankly, Eddie has no idea what Dan’s got to be concerned about. He didn’t come crashing into his office all sweat-soaked and wild-eyed. In fact, he feels pretty damn serene this morning. More well-rested than he has in months. But then again Dan isn’t really looking at Eddie so much as he’s looking at the suspicious case he’s carrying.

“Is that―” Dan tries, reaching out to point to the case, then thinking better of it and quickly drawing his hand back to a safe distance. “Is that blood?”

“What?” Eddie glances down real quick to find a dark red streak smeared across the front of the case. “Nah, no, this is— It’s just chocolate,” he says, then ineffectually wipes at the stain with his sleeve.

Dan grimaces, which is a rare thing to see.

“Eddie, I’m a doctor. I know blood when I see it.”

“Alright, fine, it’s blood. I had to do some, uh, _things_ , to get this.”

“Things?” Dan asks.

“Yeah, things. Don’t worry about it, alright? I just came by to ask you to run some tests on the slides in here, see if you can find anything.”

“And what would I be looking for?” Dan asks, betraying a secret spark of curiosity.

“Irregularities,” Eddie tells him vaguely.

“Like―”

“Like anything that you normally wouldn’t find in a human tissue sample. Anything that might suggest the Life Foundation is still dipping their toes into shady business, even after their CEO got exploded trying to instigate an alien invasion.”

“Huh,” Dan says, then reaches out to take the case. “Okay, sure, I’ll check it out.”

Eddie blinks. “Really? I thought I’d have to work harder than that to convince you.”

“What can I say? I’m a real stand-up guy sometimes.”

“You really are, Dan. I owe you. Big time.”

“All I ask for is a shout-out in your expose, if that’s where this goes.”

“You got it,” Eddie says, practically beaming, and hands him the case.

Dan takes it, then takes two exaggerated steps back, says, “Whoops,” and just lets the case go. Eddie watches it plummet down to the floor in slow motion, and god damn it, he can’t help it, it’s like some sort of involuntary reaction, a reflex – dark tendrils shoot out of his outstretched hand to catch the case before the samples shatter.

For a moment, there’s just silence, and then Dan says, “What the hell, Eddie?”

Eddie doesn’t want to look up at him just yet, so he takes a moment to run his free hand over his face and to try to regain some of that sweet, sweet tranquility he could swear he had just been feeling two seconds ago.

Dan gently plucks the case from Venom’s hold and puts it down on a nearby desk, then says, “I thought it was gone.”

“It was,” Eddie is quick to offer. “Mostly.”

“What does that mean?”

Venom, who’s been blessedly silent all morning, finally chimes in: _Let’s eat him,_ it says, but without the usual touch of glee. Dan’s a good guy. Even Venom can see that.

“We’re not going to eat someone just to get out of a difficult conversation!” Eddie insists, and Dan takes another step back. “Shit, sorry, I mean, obviously we’re not going to eat you, Dan! We like you.”

“That’s nice,” Dan says, sounding uncertain, “but maybe we could go back to the part where you explain things in more detail?”

Eddie takes a deep breath.

“Long story short, I thought it was dead, burned up in the blast, but it turns out that these things can rebuild themselves if enough, uh, _material_ survives. So even though most of it was destroyed, it kept a part of itself safely stashed away in my innards. I didn’t even know. It was too weak to talk to me or do much more than quietly munch on my non-essential organs. There was a week there where I didn’t feel so hot, and then it popped up in my head again to suggest that I might want to get it some food before it started in on the essential organs too.”

Dan looks concerned.

“But it’s all good now! It regrew all the organs once I got it some mice. The ones they sell to feed to snakes. And pigeons aren’t hard to catch, either. I was back to normal in no time.”

Eddie doesn’t feel that it’s strictly necessary to touch on the fact that ‘normal’ involves a lot more decapitation than he’s comfortable with, but it’s not like Dan doesn’t know that, so they both just stand there for a minute, feeling deeply uncomfortable together.

Then Dan says, “She called it.”

“What?”

“Anne,” he says. “She totally called it. Kept insisting you seem distracted whenever she saw you, a little jumpy. I tried to tell her it was probably just PTSD, but she was having none of it. She downloaded some app on her phone that could play the frequencies that hurt it, just to check, but I talked her out of it. Said she needs to trust you.”

Eddie snorts.

“Yeah,” Dan says, running his hand through his hair. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but this is exactly why she left you, you know that, right?”

“Oh yeah,” Eddie agrees, then hurriedly adds: “You can’t tell her.”

Dan levels such a disappointed look at him that Eddie feels the hot burst of shame that follows sear right through him.

“Of course I’m going to tell her.”

“But— Doctor/patient confidentiality!”

Dan shakes his head. “Doesn’t cover extraterrestrial body snatchers.”

And Eddie knows that this right here – this is what separates good men from unmitigated human disasters like himself. Loyalty, honesty, responsibility. He could go on, but he’s starting to feel a little bad about himself, so he chooses not to.

“Tell you what,” Dan says, “I’ll make you a deal. Come over for dinner at our place, say, Friday night, and you can tell her yourself. I promise to keep a lid on it until then.”

Eddie isn’t sure he likes this idea any better, having to sit at his former dinner table with his former fiancée and tell her he’s been lying to her – again – about something so big. Thinking back on it, he’s not even sure why he didn’t tell her the truth in the first place.

_I did advocate honesty, Eddie, but you didn’t listen._

“Shut up,” Eddie hisses, then to Dan: “Not you. You’re saying all the right things here.”

Dan crosses his arms and leans back on his desk. “So we’ll see you Friday?”

“Yeah, alright.”

“Bring dessert,” Dan says.

“Will do.”

“Just— Nothing still living.”

Eddie lets a little bit of Venom seep into his voice when he says, "Deal.”

 

::>:+:<::

The dinner goes about as well as Eddie expected, which is to say not well at all. Things start off okay with the wine, and the appetizers don’t hurt either (four kinds of cheese? What kind of life are the two of them living anyway?), but before the quiche Lorraine can be served, Eddie comes clean and the evening deteriorates into a whole lot of yelling and throwing of dinnerware and wild accusations. Okay, so maybe the accusations are not _that_ wild. Eddie did, in fact, lie to Anne again. Right to her face. Over and over. And no, he doesn’t know how she can be expected to trust him again, and he can’t think of any reason why she shouldn’t just kick him out right now, so she does.

Dan walks him to the door while Anne loads the dishwasher so violently that it might actually constitute assault, but before he shuts the door on Eddie he says, “Just give her time. She’ll calm down and come around. I know she’ll want to be there for you with— Whatever this is.”

“Really?” Eddie asks, more than a little skeptical. “Cause that sounds like she’s trying to put cutlery through the garbage disposal.”

Dan winces, but then gives Eddie a warm clap on the shoulder, keeps his hand there. “Yeah, you fucked up, but she won’t stay mad forever. It’s not like her. And besides, she really cares about you, Eddie.”

Eddie squints, carefully. “And you don’t mind? That she uh— Cares about me?”

“Why would I?”

“You don’t feel— Threatened? At all?”

Dan gives Eddie’s shoulder another friendly clap. “I don’t know how to say this without sounding like an asshole, but no, I’m really not threatened. At all. Sorry Eddie, but that ship―” he points to the kitchen, where cabinets are being thrown open and slammed shut— “has definitely sailed.”

He’s not being unkind. He’s saying the truth in that honest Doctor Dan way, trying to be as gentle about it as he can while still making it abundantly clear that whatever Eddie had with Anne is good and buried. And the worst thing about it is that Eddie knows he’s right.

“Yeah,” Eddie croaks out. “Ok, I’ll get out of your hair.”

“Hey, wait a sec. I didn’t finish. Look, maybe _that_ ship has sailed, but you still have a chance at a _friend_ ship with her, if you get your act together.”

Eddie stares at him, mouth working but making no sound.

“Bad time for a pun?”

Finally Eddie cracks a smile and says, “No such thing, doc. Thanks for dinner.”

“Sure thing,” Dan says, and hands him a plastic bag. It’s heavy. “Quiche,” he says in a low voice. “I packed some up for you when she wasn’t looking.”

The door closes but Eddie lingers on the stoop a little while longer, wondering whether he’s getting too attached to Dan.

_Stop worrying about weird shit and eat some quiche._

Incredible. Some good advice for a change, advice that Eddie fully intends to take.

He eats the quiche on the roof of the Cheesecake Factory on Geary, the one with the view of Union Square. It’s nice. Now that he’s working on his fear of heights by letting himself be subjected to increasingly terrifying rooftops on a regular basis, he thinks he might actually be starting to enjoy these more reasonable climbs.

 _Your world is beautiful at night,_ Venom says when Eddie is done eating. _So many lights._

“You mean so many people to eat,” Eddie teases, but Venom offers no snide reply.

They stay up there for a while. It’s getting cold and Eddie is just beginning to think it’s time to go home when Venom says, _You lied._

Eddie scoffs. “Yeah, I lied. That was kind of the central theme of the evening. I’ve never seen Annie that pissed.”

_No, you lied to ME._

“What? When?”

_On our ‘stakeout’, when you told me about the imaginary friend you had as a child._

“That wasn’t a lie,” Eddie huffs. “I really was that weird of a kid.”

_Not that._

“Then what?”

_When you said you weren’t lonely anymore._

“We’re not talking about this,” Eddie says, and makes to stand, but Venom plants his ass back down again, evidently not finished with the conversation.

_You ARE lonely._

“Am not.”

_You spent your Friday night getting ejected from your only friend’s house, then eating six slices of quiche on the roof of a Cheesecake Factory._

“Can’t a guy enjoy some comfort food alone at a great height?”

 _Not alone,_ Venom insists. _We are together._

“Yeah, but for how long?” Eddie asks before he can stop himself. Shit.

Venom doesn't hesitate: _Forever, Eddie._

Eddie cringes. “Sure, you say that now, but trust me, one day you’re gonna have enough of stakeouts, and only eating bad guys, and rooftop quiche, and you’re gonna swap me out. Find a better host. Your very own Dan or something.”

_You sure are an idiot, aren’t you, Eddie?_

“Well, yeah, I mean that’s pretty much my point.”

_There will be no swapping. You are the only host fit for me._

“How can you know that?” Eddie asks, lying back on the roof and trying to find some stars to stare at. “No one knows. Even if they say ‘forever’, things happen. Things change.”

_We will not change. We will always be Venom._

“God, you— You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

_You think I do not understand ‘matters of the heart’?_

“You don’t even have a heart!”

_I did not. But we do._

There’s a lump in Eddie’s throat that won’t let him speak. He blinks and blinks but he can’t see the stars. Too much light pollution, too many clouds. The quiche is making him queasy.

“Get us down from here,” he says after a while, exhaling out some of his tension when dark tendrils unfurl from his chest to help with the climb.

 

::>:+:<::

If that was where their brief discussion of loneliness ended, it might have been fine. But Eddie – he’s real detail-oriented, which comes in handy in his investigative reporting but not so much in his personal life. He can never leave the how’s and why’s alone.

It’s three a.m. and he can’t sleep, stares at the weird writhing shadows on the ceiling that Venom makes fucking around with his phone. From time to time a song plays or someone narrates the history of Japan, but Venom has the decency to keep the volume low. So considerate.

“Hey,” Eddie says, and then stops.

 _You should be sleeping,_ Venom tells him, _or you will not be well rested for tomorrow. We have an armoured truck to catch. You’ll need your rest._

Damn it, he forgot about the armoured truck.

“Yeah, ok,” Eddie says, and closes his eyes. Time passes. Then some more time.

 _Sleep,_ Venom says, but Eddie isn’t the least bit sleepy.

“Can’t.”

_Sure you can. I can help, if you want._

“No!” Eddie says a little too quickly. He still remembers the last time Venom ‘helped’ with his emotional and circadian regulation. “That’s ok. Don’t worry about it.”

The ensuing silence damn near suffocates Eddie.

“It’s just―”

Venom never sighs, because it doesn’t actually have lungs, but whenever it’s annoyed an irritating buzz starts building in the back of Eddie head. There it goes. Buzz buzz buzz.

“Look, the whole ‘forever’ thing was very nice and all, but loneliness – _human_ loneliness – isn’t just about spending time together kicking ass and eating bad guys. And quiche. You know?”

_You mean sex._

“Not just sex! It’s like what I had with Annie―”

_We can have sex, Eddie._

Eddie sit up and scrabbles back in bed, says, “Whoa, hey there, no, I feel like you’re not hearing me here. I said _not just_ sex. _Not just._ I mean a relationship.”

_We have a relationship._

“You being like this on purpose? Trying to wind me up? You know what I mean. A _relationship._ ”

_Don’t be so narrow-minded, Eddie. A family can be a man and his symbiote._

Eddie scoffs. “If you’re not gonna take this seriously―”

The black tendrils that were holding on to Eddie’s phone drop it on the bed, the blueish light suddenly dimmed by the sheets. They move to crawl along his skin instead, from wrist to shoulder, foot to hip.

_I am taking this very seriously, Eddie._

Eddie yelps, bats uselessly at the offending appendages.

“Stop that! Hey! We’re not having sex! Not happening.”

_Why not?_

“Because,” Eddie says.

_You can’t even offer a good reason._

“I―”

 _Remember this?_ Venom asks, and spreads itself in a thin, slick layer over Eddie’s skin, coating his neck and belly and the insides of his thighs. Eddie shifts, tries to lift his body off the mattress in an attempt to get away from the wash of feeling all over.

“Fuck,” he rasps out, and it just keeps going. Across his chest, down his arms, over his cock, behind his knees, flowing like oil, rippling everywhere all at once.

_You like thinking about it. Remembering. Imagining._

Eddie sees no point in lying.

“Yeah.”

 _We can do more,_ Venom says, and before Eddie can even begin to worry about what _more_ might mean, the flutter of feeling on the outside of his body is matched by an inward one. Everything inside him sparks up with a dark warmth – silk on his tongue, a hum in his head, a shot of adrenaline down his spine, heat in his belly.

“Holy shit,” he gasps out in between short, shallow breaths.

Something electric makes his muscles seize. His bones begin to vibrate, just a little.

“Fuck, I’m gonna―”

 _No you’re not,_ Venom tells him, its voice echoing inside Eddie’s head. He can’t hear anything except for his own heavy breathing and the receding thunder of that voice.

He was going to come, his body tense with it, heavy, but then the chemical storm of it subsides. His body quiets down, but not for long. He’s still wrapped up, filled up, dissolving in the liquid dark.

 _Is it good?_ Venom asks, but in a smug sort of way that implies it already knows.

“Hell yeah,” Eddie says on a long exhale. It’s building up again, a black wave heading towards shore, but he remembers his manners, asks, “How— What about you?”

Venom purrs – _Delicious –_ and Eddie feels like there’s a wet tongue licking honey from the back of his neck. The very pleasant twitching that’s started up in him dies down again.

“Keep doing that,” Eddie begs, and Venom takes no issue with that particular request.

It’s unreal. Eddie’s never had sex like this, isn’t even sure you could call it sex. Venom covers every bit of his flesh, glides up his throat to cover his mouth, his eyes, his ears, just barely letting him keep breathing. It’s like a sensory overload chamber – Eddie can’t feel the bed below him, the air in the room, nothing but Venom wringing more and more of those _delicious_ chemicals out of his body without ever actually letting him come.

An eternity passes before Venom says, _It’s time. Are you ready?_

Eddie is not. He wants more of this, forever. He tries to say as much, but his mouth feels like it’s full of something salty and hot, so he shakes his head instead.

 _It isn’t safe to keep going,_ Venom insists. _But don’t worry, we will make it a fitting end._

Pinpricks of heat set Eddie’s blood to boiling. Every muscle in his body goes slack. When it hits him, he nearly doubles over with shock, wants to scream but can’t. All that comes out are the desperate wet noises of a drowning man. He shakes, clenches up, feels it everywhere at once, like diving into cold water. For a few terrifying seconds he’s submerged in simple animal ecstasy, and then it’s over.

Venom, being a surprisingly generous lover – if you can call it that – doesn’t dissipate right away, and lets Eddie keep most of that last burst of neurotransmitters to himself. When it does finally loosen its grip on Eddie’s body, it draws the blanket over him before it goes, and leaves one last tendril out, curled around Eddie’s wrist and up into his palm.

“Holy shit,” Eddie says after a few moments of well-deserved rest. “That is not how I thought it would go.”

_I thought it went quite well._

“Jesus, yeah, it was uh— It went _very_ well, don’t get me wrong. I guess I was just expecting— Tentacles or something? Like those really hardcore Japanese cartoons.”

 _We can do that too,_ Venom supplies, which sends Eddie into a coughing fit that might actually be part panic attack.

“No, thanks, I’m good with this. More of this, please. None of that.”

_For now._

“Shit,” Eddie swears and buries his head under his pillow. “Really stepped in it this time, Brock. Fuck an alien one time and this is what you get.”

A stray tendril slithers up Eddie’s leg to brush against his ass, dipping slowly, carefully, between his cheeks, but Eddie falls asleep before Venom can make good on its threats.

 

::>:+:<::

‘Come for dinner, asshole,’ is the text Eddie receives from Anne a couple of weeks later.

Then a few seconds after that, one from Dan: ‘Friday at 6. I’m making a veggie lasagna. BYOT (Bring Your Own Tupperware)! See you soon :)’

That dude is really too wonderful for words. But the main thing is it looks like Anne’s forgiven him, or is at least open to peace talks.

“We’ll have to be on our best behaviour,” Eddie warns, watching in the mirror as Venom ties a fancy knot in his tie with the help of a thorough YouTube tutorial.

 _We should bring wine,_ Venom tells him when it's done with the tie.

“Yes, dear,” Eddie says, rolling his eyes, but he does in fact pick up a bottle of wine on the way over to Anne’n’Dan’s. Not the cheap shit, either. He drops $30 for something with a castle on the label and hopes it will make a nice enough offering for smoothing things over.

Turns out a bottle of wine, no matter how mid-range, does not negate the need for at least five heartfelt apologies on his part (and Venom’s – Anne insists that it knew what it was doing too, and owed her at least one ‘sorry’). After that bit of prostrating, dinner goes well, and Eddie even gets to eat his lasagna seated at a table with his friends instead of alone on a rooftop. A welcome change of pace.

As the evening winds down, there’s nowhere left for the conversation to go except into the tangled wilds of Eddie’s personal life.

“Oh, I almost forgot!” Anne says. “There’s a new temp at the firm, and guess what, Eddie? She loves your stuff! I think she even follows you on Twitter, but don’t tell her I told you that.”

“How would I―”

“She’s really nice, sharp, funny as hell. I think you’d like her.”

“I don’t know―”

“It doesn’t have to be a whole _thing._ But Dan says you haven’t been seeing anyone, not since we— Well. You know.”

Eddie turns discreetly to Dan, hoping to make the full depth of this betrayal known to him with a single glare, but Dan is conveniently studying a potted fern across the room with great concentration.

“Anyway,” Anne says softly, “I just think it would be good for you, to get out there again. Meet some nice people, maybe. Have some fun.”

At the words ‘nice’, ‘people’, and ‘fun’, Venom stirs in a most unpleasant way.

_Mine._

“Yes, I know,” Eddie hisses, head lowered.

“What’s that?” Anne asks.

Eddie clears his throat. “Uh, yes, I know. It’s a— Yeah, very good idea. And I already— I didn’t tell Dan because I wasn’t sure it was going anywhere at first, but I already kinda met someone. Someone nice. And fun. So thanks, but I’m good.”

For a moment Anne looks like she isn’t sure exactly how to feel about this news, but the moment passes and then she’s genuinely happy for him. It makes Eddie smile, and she smiles right back.

Then Anne has lots of questions: “So who is this mystery someone? Are we going to meet her? What’s her name?”

And even though Anne has been pretty good with the whole Venom situation up until now, Eddie knows, without a shadow of a doubt, that he can’t tell her about all the hot alien sex he’s been having, so he says the first name that comes to mind:

“Fred.”

Anne looks at him. Even Dan turns to look at him, risking a glare.

“Fred,” Anne repeats, and bless her soul, she looks happy for him anyway. Doesn’t even blink at the fact that her one-time fiancé is now apparently into dudes. “What’s he like?” she asks, and Eddie starts talking. He isn’t in complete conscious control of everything he's saying, but he’s trying very hard not to let any Venom-related descriptors slip into the frantic word-salad that spews out of his mouth.

Anne smiles at him, radiating unconditional support, but next to her, on the very same couch, Dan is visibly dying inside. Because Dan is a brilliant son of a bitch and he’s figured it out. Damn it, he’s figured it out, but to his credit he doesn’t say a word.

When Eddie’s walking home, though, that’s when the texts start coming in. Chime after chime after chime.

‘EDDIE’  
‘EDDIE PLEASE TELL ME YOU DIDN’T’  
‘FROM A MEDICAL STANDPOINT ALONE IT’S INSANE’  
‘WHAT IF IT HAS SPACE HERPES?’  
‘Sorry.’  
‘I’m sure Venom doesn’t have space herpes.’  
‘Just… Tell me you didn’t.’

Eddie decides that’s a conversation he can afford to leave for another day. He puts his phone on silent, sticks his hands in his pockets – where tendrils sprout to curl around his fingers – and says, “Let’s go home, Fred.”

True to form, Fred doesn’t answer, but Eddie can feel Venom’s amusement bubbling up in his chest.

 

**Author's Note:**

> \- I really hope the Spanish sentence Venom says to Eddie means 'go to sleep, loser'. I fully google-translated that shit. If you speak Spanish and discover that google lied to me, please correct me so I can fix it.  
> \- The title is from a Roy Orbison song that perfectly sums up Eddie's Whole Entire Situation, I think.  
> \- Dan is my favourite. I wish Dan was my imaginary friend.


End file.
